30/05/02
We staggered onto the 6.30 am train to find that the standing room only carriage actually did have seats, but that they were all taken, with a mass of passengers standing all around them. The train had begun in Shanghai, and was packed with people going home for the holiday to visit family. The deal was that you paid for a standing ticket, but if someone got off and vacated their seat, you could sit down on it. This meant that the carriage was full of folk literally standing for a seat, politicking, deal making, cajoling those lucky enough to be sitting, but who were getting off before the train reached Tai Yuan. There were far too many people to each get a seat, however, and we were faced with a potential eleven-hour stand. Gina gulped and gasped like a fish caught on the hook then thrown onto the dock. She began to talk about how nice Qingdao sounded, couldn't we jump off at the next station and go there instead? Clive and I told her we were going to stick to our original plan. The plan we'd worked out months ago. The plan she'd insisted upon gatecrashing, after finding that her other travel arrangements had fallen through. She pulled a face and muttered under her breath.
At the next stop, Jinan, Gina suddenly put on her authoritative voice and said:
'RIGHT!'
We watched her fumble with her suitcase and push her way to the train doors. She turned to look at us.
'Are you coming?'
Clive and I looked at each other, faced with the choice of enjoying the holiday which we'd planned, and Gina had parachuted herself in upon, and leaving her on her own in a strange city in the middle of China, or going with her. Clive slowly shook his head. I nodded. We were staying. To our astonishment, Gina stepped down from the carriage and stomped off into the busy train station. Unaware of our domestic chagrin, the train pulled away on its inexorable route, and took Clive and I with it, Gina-less. She didn't even say goodbye. We're a bit worried about her. She's never been on her own in China before, and I think she's suffering from one of the longest culture shocks in the history of travel. But it was her choice, in the end.
After seven hours of standing with a little guy's elbow nestled into the base of my spine, it was announced that there were some hard sleeper bunks now available. I fought my way to the booth, upgraded our tickets and, at the next stop, Clive and I lugged our rucksacks along the platform, along the length of the train, and made it to carriage number 15 (from carriage number 5) just in time. The next four hours passed much more pleasantly. We talked to some Tai Yuan locals, including an intelligent graduate who was studying English and American literature in Shanghai, and a kind female English teacher who recommended to us the hotel we're staying in, the Railway Hotel, which is adequate, fairly cheap, although dingy in its brown, green and beige colours and a little mouldy-smelling.
The landscape of Shanxi province is fascinating and ancient in a dry, bleached-out way. It's called 'The Yellow Land' as, the further inland you get, the more parched the earth becomes, rivers drying up, mountains yellow and dusty, the newly-arrived sun beating down from a clear blue sky on a sickly, barren, desert opus of huge flat plateaus skirted by shimmering yellow-brown peaks. As the journey progressed, the narrow river that snaked desperately through the dirt gradually became narrower, shallower, until it eventually ended up a dry creek. The thin strips of paddy fields and cypress trees, built on irrigated banks with thin rivulets of water diverted towards them, wither and disappear. All that's left is stone and dust and sun. The train goes through numerous dark tunnels, blasted straight through the yellow mountains, with a huge honk of its horn. Thirty-odd black entrances into the unknown on our eleven hour trip.
Shanxi's economy is driven by coal. Every place glimpsed from the mucky window of our train- crumbling little towns and cities that looked like they needed a refreshing drink of cold water and then a good wash- were mining towns. I was told that the city of Datong is home to China's biggest coal mine, some 300,000 men working there, and that the town is so singularly reliant on its coal, the people's faces have taken on the colour of their money: black. This may have been middle-class snobbery from my travelling companions, most Chinese believing dark skin signifies rural backwardness. This stereotype is exacerbated by the fact that, as rural poverty (the farmers prohibited from owning the land they farm, which belongs to the government) increases in China, so does the population of migrant workers.
Tai Yuan is witnessing a huge influx of peasant farmers looking for jobs in the city, searching for that imagined yellow-brick road in 'The Yellow Land' that will take them away from their rural poverty and make them rich city-dwellers. Many parents work all the hours of the day in the city, to send money home to fund their children's education, the children being brought up by their grandparents. This migration is inter-provincial, many of the immigrants being from the northwest province of Xin Jiang, which is home to a large ethnic minority population, the people looking more like Uzbekistanis or Afghans than Han Chinese. These people are blamed by the Han Chinese for any crime from theft to murder. The graduate student with whom I was happily talking literature, shocked me with a sudden outburst of narrow-mindedness.
'You must be careful in Tai Yuan. There are many Xin Jiang people, and they are dangerous. They will take a knife and kill you for your shoes.'
'That happens in the UK and America too, you know, ' I countered. 'Especially if you're wearing the new Adidas or Nike. And don't you think some Han Chinese commit crimes too?'
This wasn't a very smart remark. It just made him angry.
'No! You do not understand. These people are poor and have no morals. They are low-quality people.'
He actually said that. Low-quality people. So, you take over your neighbour's land, exploit their resources, force them to toe the Party line, then brand them second-class citizens for their trouble. And all in the name of 'The People'. Old Karl Marx'll be turning in his grave. The literature student was talking of the Xin Jiang ethnic minority like some kind of untouchable caste. I mumbled some argument that in every country, every people, there were good and bad, and we mustn't generalise, but he was adamant, prefered to talk rather than listen, and never let up on the subject until eventually giving me some respite by going to the toilet. Clive had been listening to our conversation with some amusement and said, with an ironic twinkle in his eye:
'I bet he's a government spy. You know, the government has spies everywhere, and for some of them, their mission is to talk to foreigners and weed out the bad seeds. Watch what you say.'
The literature graduate came back from the toilet, and we eyed him suspiciously.
Instead of a seedy and dangerous Sodom or Gomorrah, however, we found in Tai Yuan a busy, rough-and-ready vibe, a mixture of well-dressed young people walking arm-in-arm from KFC to the nearest nightclub, and crowds of swarthy workers playing cards, Chinese chess, or just gossiping vehemently on the street corners. Scores of children were skipping and playing tag. The trees were in leaf, the night almost balmy, the city a work unfinished, beaten old dirt-encrusted buildings, like has-been boxers, going toe-to-toe with spanking new skyscrapers and department stores; like any other middle-sized city in this country, in fact.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tai Shan
28/05/02
The overnight train journey to Tai'An, the small town at the foot of Tai Shan mountain, was the first good night's sleep I've ever had on a hard sleeper bunk. On arrival, I jumped from the train full of beans, wearing yesterday's blue jeans, blue trainers, red T-shirt and short denim jacket, and found myself shivering in a cold, grey, drizzly day. We approached the mountain down a long road full of temples and souvenir stalls, the drizzle intensifying. I bought a green 'I've been to Tai Shan' pork-pie hat and perched it rakishly on my head like a true tourist, where it sat all the way up the mountain, getting steadily wetter, until I had to wring it out like a dishcloth.
I'm sure the walk up to Zhongtian Men (The Midway Gate to Heaven), the halfway point up the mountain, would have been spectacular, had we been able to see anything. We could just make out deep gorges, bamboo, big rocks, and thick forests with cool glades, to either side of the stone steps, but only to a distance of thirty or forty feet. As the day wore on, the rain got heavier, the mist thicker, and we could make out less and less. We decided to spend the night at the halfway point, as making for the summit would be pointless in this weather.
On the way up, unable to see much in the way of scenery, I contented myself with studying the many tour groups going up and down the mountain in huge lines like herded goats. At the bottom, a group of company-men, all wearing identical shapeless black suits, stopped at a stall and exchanged their identical slip-on black shoes for identical black and white plimsolls, this their only concession to the fact that they weren't actually going to the office today but, in fact, were walking up a very high mountain in the rain. Large groups of students messed around, slipping, laughing and flirting, as if there were no rain at all. Brawny bull-necked businessmen held on tightly to their trophy wives, who tottered and complained their way up the steep slippery steps in incongruous high-heels. Contrasted against these well-off holidaymakers, tiny, shirtless weather-beaten old men lugged heavy bamboo shoulder-poles, a crate of beer or net of watermelons, bags of washing powder or boxes of oranges, hanging from either side of the pole, weighing the men down into back-bending, leg-sapping postures. As the old men struggled slowly up the steps, their warped, disfigured shoulders bore testament to their daily toil.
Clive and I reached The Midway Gate to Heaven a full forty-five minutes before Gina. We found a tiny hostel down a narrow path and paid for the room, no questions asked, despite the stinky toilet. We waited for Gina outside the temple, chatting to the drookit monks and playing with the mucky indigenous children. A soggy wreath of incense merged with the thick mist. Buddhist chants, played on a battered old tape deck, mingled with the pitter-patter of the rain. Tour groups were led past us by dripping tour guides, almost every single tourist proudly sporting a long orange or yellow waterproof bin-liner with hood. It was like watching a strange sci-fi movie where the humans with little flags for weapons have captured the orange and yellow aliens and are taking them off in droves to be experimented upon. Eventually, Gina made it, we dried off, changed our clothes, had some food, and began to feel a little better. However, we were disappointed because it didn’t look like we’d be able to see the sun come up from behind China's holiest mountain the next morning; if anything, the rain was even heavier than before.
29/05/02
Ah, now that's good coffee! I'd stashed some instant coffee packets in my rucksack and, at 5.30 in the morning, I poured hot water from the flask into my stainless-steel travelling cup, and went out into the dawn mist for a look about. There was an impressively mystical view of shifting mountaintops in the windy mist, peaks and pagodas appearing and disappearing high above in grey silhouette. The light skitter of rain on temple roofs. The first smell of incense lit by an early-rising monk. A cat mewling for its breakfast. The aroma of fresh rain-soaked grass and fir trees steaming in the mist. No one stirred, no one talked, nothing else broke the pact of silence the monk and I had made with the encroaching dawn.
Suddenly, a scream. It sounded like Gina. I ran back to our room to find her sitting ashen-faced on her bed. She'd gone to the stinky toilet and had vomited at the stench.
We started for the summit around 8 am. As we progressed higher, the mist and rain again began to increase, and we knew we'd be able to see nothing at the top. It would be a complete whiteout, or should I say, grey-out. Again, we felt a surge of disappointment; surely the view, in fair weather, from over 1,500 metres up, would be breathtaking. But we were never to see it. The stone steps increased in intensity and steepness, getting dangerously narrow and slippery, so that if you lost your footing, at some points you'd be in for a fifty-foot tumble down a steep stone-flagged slope. Treetops and misty gorges shifted and moved below us. Rocky creeks once home to rivers and waterfalls lapped up the rainfall and gurgled and spat. To either side, abandoned boulders sprouted ferns and weeds, and green walls of bamboo tickled the iron railings.
Despite starting early, the higher we ascended, the thicker the misty mass of tourists became. I spent half an hour at the top with a lively bunch of medical students from Jinan, waiting for Clive. I was in all of their photos, none of which I'll ever see. Clive arrived, and we spent some time exploring the summit's various temples and viewing points, which might have looked impressive set against a backdrop of towering green mountain peaks and wooded descents, but now looked forlorn, sad and grey in the foggy drizzle. We studied the rock formations, which Clive identified as quartzite and serpentine. The huge stones jutted out at weird angles, some pointing straight up to the sky like thick bulbous fingers, some rounded and flat like giants' gravestones. Formed in some Neolithic storm, a clashing together of huge glaciers, they sat foreboding and intransigent in the mist. Most striking was the Boulder Bridge, a humpbacked formation of connected rocks that had somehow lodged themselves between two sides of a deep crevasse to form a bridge of improbable natural design.
It was, however, cold and wet so, once we'd found Gina, we decided to head back down. I was more prepared for the conditions today, having bought a bright orange plastic poncho and red 'I've been to Tai Shan' headscarf from a stall at the Midway Gate to Heaven. I must have looked mighty strange, but that still didn’t excuse the comments Clive and I received on our descent. As we walked, we were subjected not just to the usual stares, but to continual insults as well. Clive's Chinese is quite good now, and he can understand much of what is said to him, or should I say, about him. We were called ugly, stupid, strange, hairy, and big-nosed, the last of which I do take offence to.
'What can you do?' Clive says, ever the pragmatist. 'Cindy taught me a phrase to say: ni zai kan shen me? Which directly translated means: You looking at what?'
'Cool. Have you tried it out yet?'
'Yeah, first time I tried it, the guy just stared at me even more!'
'D'you think he understood you?'
'He understood my words, of course, but not my meaning. He looked at me as if to say: 'What d'you think I'm staring at? I'm staring at a strange-looking foreigner! Any self-respecting Chinese would do the same thing and, if I could, I'd sell tickets.''
We reached the bottom late afternoon, walked out the main gate, and down the long street full of temples and trinket shops, Gina lagging behind. It's not that we were walking fast, it's just whenever we walked slower, she somehow managed to outdo us and find an even lower gear than we were already in, stopping every five minutes to catch her breath or complain about her sore feet. We'd stop, wait for her to catch up then have to wait for her to rest. Impatient, we'd walk away even more slowly than before but then, just moments later, turn back to see her motionless, standing like a distant shadowy obelisk in the rain. It was frustrating for us, and unbearable for her.
Deciding to take the mountain to Mohammed, we got into a taxi and found a clean two-star hotel in the centre of the small city of Tai'An. The city is gearing itself up for a busy week of tourists; we're gearing ourselves up for a standing-room only train journey back west along the Yellow River (which surely must have some water in it now, after all this rain) to Tai Yuan, which leaves at 6.30 am tomorrow morning. When Clive and I returned from the train station, Gina was decidedly unhappy to find out that the train was standing room only, and furious when she heard the departure time. We told her to get the tickets herself next time, rather than sleeping in her hotel bed whilst we did the pushing and shoving at the station. There's a vibe like a bad smell in our room tonight, but I've a feeling it won't stop me sleeping.
The overnight train journey to Tai'An, the small town at the foot of Tai Shan mountain, was the first good night's sleep I've ever had on a hard sleeper bunk. On arrival, I jumped from the train full of beans, wearing yesterday's blue jeans, blue trainers, red T-shirt and short denim jacket, and found myself shivering in a cold, grey, drizzly day. We approached the mountain down a long road full of temples and souvenir stalls, the drizzle intensifying. I bought a green 'I've been to Tai Shan' pork-pie hat and perched it rakishly on my head like a true tourist, where it sat all the way up the mountain, getting steadily wetter, until I had to wring it out like a dishcloth.
I'm sure the walk up to Zhongtian Men (The Midway Gate to Heaven), the halfway point up the mountain, would have been spectacular, had we been able to see anything. We could just make out deep gorges, bamboo, big rocks, and thick forests with cool glades, to either side of the stone steps, but only to a distance of thirty or forty feet. As the day wore on, the rain got heavier, the mist thicker, and we could make out less and less. We decided to spend the night at the halfway point, as making for the summit would be pointless in this weather.
On the way up, unable to see much in the way of scenery, I contented myself with studying the many tour groups going up and down the mountain in huge lines like herded goats. At the bottom, a group of company-men, all wearing identical shapeless black suits, stopped at a stall and exchanged their identical slip-on black shoes for identical black and white plimsolls, this their only concession to the fact that they weren't actually going to the office today but, in fact, were walking up a very high mountain in the rain. Large groups of students messed around, slipping, laughing and flirting, as if there were no rain at all. Brawny bull-necked businessmen held on tightly to their trophy wives, who tottered and complained their way up the steep slippery steps in incongruous high-heels. Contrasted against these well-off holidaymakers, tiny, shirtless weather-beaten old men lugged heavy bamboo shoulder-poles, a crate of beer or net of watermelons, bags of washing powder or boxes of oranges, hanging from either side of the pole, weighing the men down into back-bending, leg-sapping postures. As the old men struggled slowly up the steps, their warped, disfigured shoulders bore testament to their daily toil.
Clive and I reached The Midway Gate to Heaven a full forty-five minutes before Gina. We found a tiny hostel down a narrow path and paid for the room, no questions asked, despite the stinky toilet. We waited for Gina outside the temple, chatting to the drookit monks and playing with the mucky indigenous children. A soggy wreath of incense merged with the thick mist. Buddhist chants, played on a battered old tape deck, mingled with the pitter-patter of the rain. Tour groups were led past us by dripping tour guides, almost every single tourist proudly sporting a long orange or yellow waterproof bin-liner with hood. It was like watching a strange sci-fi movie where the humans with little flags for weapons have captured the orange and yellow aliens and are taking them off in droves to be experimented upon. Eventually, Gina made it, we dried off, changed our clothes, had some food, and began to feel a little better. However, we were disappointed because it didn’t look like we’d be able to see the sun come up from behind China's holiest mountain the next morning; if anything, the rain was even heavier than before.
29/05/02
Ah, now that's good coffee! I'd stashed some instant coffee packets in my rucksack and, at 5.30 in the morning, I poured hot water from the flask into my stainless-steel travelling cup, and went out into the dawn mist for a look about. There was an impressively mystical view of shifting mountaintops in the windy mist, peaks and pagodas appearing and disappearing high above in grey silhouette. The light skitter of rain on temple roofs. The first smell of incense lit by an early-rising monk. A cat mewling for its breakfast. The aroma of fresh rain-soaked grass and fir trees steaming in the mist. No one stirred, no one talked, nothing else broke the pact of silence the monk and I had made with the encroaching dawn.
Suddenly, a scream. It sounded like Gina. I ran back to our room to find her sitting ashen-faced on her bed. She'd gone to the stinky toilet and had vomited at the stench.
We started for the summit around 8 am. As we progressed higher, the mist and rain again began to increase, and we knew we'd be able to see nothing at the top. It would be a complete whiteout, or should I say, grey-out. Again, we felt a surge of disappointment; surely the view, in fair weather, from over 1,500 metres up, would be breathtaking. But we were never to see it. The stone steps increased in intensity and steepness, getting dangerously narrow and slippery, so that if you lost your footing, at some points you'd be in for a fifty-foot tumble down a steep stone-flagged slope. Treetops and misty gorges shifted and moved below us. Rocky creeks once home to rivers and waterfalls lapped up the rainfall and gurgled and spat. To either side, abandoned boulders sprouted ferns and weeds, and green walls of bamboo tickled the iron railings.
Despite starting early, the higher we ascended, the thicker the misty mass of tourists became. I spent half an hour at the top with a lively bunch of medical students from Jinan, waiting for Clive. I was in all of their photos, none of which I'll ever see. Clive arrived, and we spent some time exploring the summit's various temples and viewing points, which might have looked impressive set against a backdrop of towering green mountain peaks and wooded descents, but now looked forlorn, sad and grey in the foggy drizzle. We studied the rock formations, which Clive identified as quartzite and serpentine. The huge stones jutted out at weird angles, some pointing straight up to the sky like thick bulbous fingers, some rounded and flat like giants' gravestones. Formed in some Neolithic storm, a clashing together of huge glaciers, they sat foreboding and intransigent in the mist. Most striking was the Boulder Bridge, a humpbacked formation of connected rocks that had somehow lodged themselves between two sides of a deep crevasse to form a bridge of improbable natural design.
It was, however, cold and wet so, once we'd found Gina, we decided to head back down. I was more prepared for the conditions today, having bought a bright orange plastic poncho and red 'I've been to Tai Shan' headscarf from a stall at the Midway Gate to Heaven. I must have looked mighty strange, but that still didn’t excuse the comments Clive and I received on our descent. As we walked, we were subjected not just to the usual stares, but to continual insults as well. Clive's Chinese is quite good now, and he can understand much of what is said to him, or should I say, about him. We were called ugly, stupid, strange, hairy, and big-nosed, the last of which I do take offence to.
'What can you do?' Clive says, ever the pragmatist. 'Cindy taught me a phrase to say: ni zai kan shen me? Which directly translated means: You looking at what?'
'Cool. Have you tried it out yet?'
'Yeah, first time I tried it, the guy just stared at me even more!'
'D'you think he understood you?'
'He understood my words, of course, but not my meaning. He looked at me as if to say: 'What d'you think I'm staring at? I'm staring at a strange-looking foreigner! Any self-respecting Chinese would do the same thing and, if I could, I'd sell tickets.''
We reached the bottom late afternoon, walked out the main gate, and down the long street full of temples and trinket shops, Gina lagging behind. It's not that we were walking fast, it's just whenever we walked slower, she somehow managed to outdo us and find an even lower gear than we were already in, stopping every five minutes to catch her breath or complain about her sore feet. We'd stop, wait for her to catch up then have to wait for her to rest. Impatient, we'd walk away even more slowly than before but then, just moments later, turn back to see her motionless, standing like a distant shadowy obelisk in the rain. It was frustrating for us, and unbearable for her.
Deciding to take the mountain to Mohammed, we got into a taxi and found a clean two-star hotel in the centre of the small city of Tai'An. The city is gearing itself up for a busy week of tourists; we're gearing ourselves up for a standing-room only train journey back west along the Yellow River (which surely must have some water in it now, after all this rain) to Tai Yuan, which leaves at 6.30 am tomorrow morning. When Clive and I returned from the train station, Gina was decidedly unhappy to find out that the train was standing room only, and furious when she heard the departure time. We told her to get the tickets herself next time, rather than sleeping in her hotel bed whilst we did the pushing and shoving at the station. There's a vibe like a bad smell in our room tonight, but I've a feeling it won't stop me sleeping.
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